Chapter 7. Doxologies in the New Testament

The Greek word doxa (δόξα) means “glory”. Doxologies are praises and attributions of glory to God. If the New Testament is really as Christ-cen­tered as trinitarians say it is, why are there so many doxologies dir­ected to God the Father and almost none to Jesus Christ?

But notwithstanding this fact, Jesus has brought so much glory to God that doxo­logies to God arose spontan­eously to pro­claim Jesus’ won­derful work by the power of Yahweh who indwelled him. This will become clearer when we look at the powerful express­ions of praise to God on account of Jesus. Let us begin by look­ing at the New Testament doxo­log­ical express­ions.

The doxological expression “to Him be glory forever” or similar (e.g., Rom. 11:36, autō hē doxa eis tous aiōnas) occurs 13 times in the New Testament (7 times in Paul’s letters) and is always concluded with “Amen” (in the case of Rev.5:13, the “Amen” is uttered by others). Contrary to what we might expect, none of the 13 doxologies is directed to Christ except in Rev.5:13 where the doxology is directed not to him alone but to him and God the Father together (we have already discussed this special case in the pre­vious chapter). Here are the 13 references:

All these doxologies are directed to the Father and none to Christ (with the sole and limited exception of Rev.5:13 in which Christ is the second object of the dox­ology after God the Father). And where Christ is mentioned, he is spoken of as the one through whom (Rom.16:27; 1Pet.4:11; Jude 1:25) or in whom (Eph.3:21) God is glor­ified.

Some commentators see 2Tim.4:18 as referring to Christ, but from the general nature of doxologies in Paul’s letters, this is hard to see. Neither Jesus nor Christ is named in chap­ter 4 except in verse 1, which belongs to a differ­ent section of the letter. Jesus is not expli­citly called “Lord” in this section, and “Lord” could just as easily refer to God the Father as it does in 2:19 (twice). Hence no absolute conclusion can be made as to whether 2 Timothy 4:18 refers to Jesus or not; but if it does refer to Jesus, it would be a departure from the other doxo­logies in Paul’s writings.

The doxology in 2 Peter 3:18, which is not included in the list above, is addressed to Christ:

This doxology does not stand on the same level as those listed in the pre­vious section, for two reasons. Firstly, it does not have the same word­ing as the other doxolo­gies. The word “forever” that is used in the other doxologies is here replaced with “both now and to the day of eternity”. The unusual phrase “the day of eter­nity,” which com­mentators find diffi­cult, is found no­where else in the Bible, neither in the New Testament nor the Old, but is found in the apocry­phal book Sirach, in 18:10. Even there it is not an exact match because Sirach has the preposition en where 2 Peter 3:18 has eis:

It is believed that Sirach was written in the Hebrew language around 180 BC and trans­lated into Greek around 55 years later. It belongs to the tradit­ion of the Jewish Wisdom writings.

Secondly, although 2Pet.3:18 is concluded with “Amen” in most Bibles, the UBS3 Greek text assigns “Amen” the lowest degree of textual cer­tain­ty {D} and encloses “Amen” in square brackets to indicate that the reading is disputed. In UBS4, “Amen” has been elevated to {C}, but is still enclosed in brackets as also in NA27. Most significantly, “Amen” is removed altogether from the main text of UBS5 and NA28, as also in Westcott-Hort.

Since “Amen” appears in the 13 doxo­logies listed above except Rev.5:13, the un­certain status of “Amen” in the doxol­ogy of 2 Peter 3:18, in combinat­ion with other considerat­ions, means that the doxology doesn’t stand on the same level as the others.

We now briefly survey, with minimal commentary, the major or extended doxo­logies in the New Testament out­side Revel­ation (those in Revelation will be covered in the next section). The doxologies in this sec­tion include about half of those listed in the previous section which are based on the dox­o­logical structure “to Him be glory forever”. Each doxology in this sect­ion will be quoted in full from Scripture and then briefly discussed. The first is:

This doxology is addressed to God alone. Neither Jesus nor Christ is men­tioned by name in the whole chapter, though v.26 (“the Deliverer will come from Zion, he will banish ungodliness from Jacob,” quoting Isaiah 59:20-21) refers to God’s salvation through Christ.

In the next doxology, God is called “the eternal God” and “the only wise God”:

Here the words “to the only wise God be glory forevermore” con­clude Romans chapter 16 just as the words “to him be glory forever” in the preced­ing doxology, Romans 11:36, con­cludes Romans 11. Similar language is used in the short but magnificent doxo­logy of 1 Timothy 1:17:

This doxology, located near the beginning of 1 Timothy, is complemented by an­other near the end of 1 Timothy:

We cannot hastily suppose that this latter doxology refers to Christ just because he is mentioned in v.14. A look at the internal con­tent of this doxol­ogy reveals that it cannot refer to Christ. First, the term “only Sovereign” can hardly refer to Christ since the earlier doxology, in 1:17, speaks of God as “the only God”. Second, the earlier doxology, in 1:17, speaks of God as “immor­tal,” a statement that is mirrored in “who alone has immortal­ity” in the later doxology. The fact that Christ died means that he is not immortal. But if despite this fact we still insist that Christ is immortal, we would make Paul’s state­ment to say that Christ “alone” has immor­tality, ruling out God the Father as im­mortal! Third, the clause “whom no one has ever seen or can see” can hardly apply to Jesus.

This doxology does not conclude with the familiar form­ula “to whom be glory forever” but with the slightly different “to him be honor and eternal dominion” (v.16).

The next doxology, in Hebrews 13:20-21, is not of the Pauline model but a prayer for blessing. But insofar as it speaks of God as “the God of peace” and as the one “who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus,” it does have doxological elem­ents.

Our next passage, Jude 1:24-25, is not a doxology of the Pauline type, but like Hebrews 13:20-21 it does have doxological content in that it speaks of “His glory” and “the only God, our Savior”. The concluding ascription of glory to God, “before all time and now and forever,” corresponds to the truth that God is the one “who is and who was and who is to come” (Rev. 1:8).

For com­pleteness we list the three instances of the ex­press­ion of praise, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ”. The follow­ing three verses (quoted from ESV) all begin with the word “blessed” to express praise and adoration:

These three belong to three different NT letters, and each appears at the start of its respective letter. Yet they all use the same doxology, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” indica­ting that it may have been crystalized into a doxological form that is widely used in the early church, perhaps at the commence­ment of house church meetings.

We note a few things: (i) These three NT letters begin by saying that God is “blessed”—i.e., praised, glorified, adored—before going on to other things. Thus Yahweh is the center and focus of the letters. (ii) Christ is not included as the object of the praise; rather, it is in Christ that Yahweh blesses the believer with every spiritual blessing. (iii) Yahweh is, first and fore­most, “the God and Father” of our Lord Jesus Christ; and it is in Christ that God also becomes our God and Father. What stands out from these dox­o­logies is that there is only one God, namely, the God and Father of Jesus Christ.

God, who is called “the Lord God Almighty” in Revelation 4:8, is always the focus of worship and adoration in Revelation:

Revelation portrays God as the one who sits on the throne (v.9; also 4:2; 5:1; 6:16; 7:15; 12:5). The 24 elders have their own thrones, and these are placed “before God” (11:16; 4:4).

Jesus also has his own throne: “The one who conquers, I will grant him to sit with me on my throne, as I also con­quered and sat down with my Father on his throne” (Rev.3:21). Within one sen­tence, Jesus speaks of “my throne” and “his throne,” making a distinct­ion between two thrones, one belonging to God, the other to Jesus. At his Father’s throne, Jesus is granted a place at His right hand, just as the victor­ious saints will be granted to “sit with me on my throne”. Al­though Jesus is granted to sit with the Father on the Father’s throne, Jesus is not men­tioned in the dox­ology of Rev.4:8-11 which we just quoted, a remarkable omission given that the doxol­ogy gives much prominence to thrones and is replete with em­phatic refer­ences to God’s throne and to the wor­ship of God before His throne.

Revelation 11:17 is another paean of praise to God, yet again there is no mention of Jesus:

In the following doxology of Revelation 14:7, an angel com­mands those who dwell on earth to “fear God and give Him glory” and to “wor­ship Him”:

In the following doxology of Revelation 15:3-4, those who have over­come the beast join in heaven to worship God by singing the song of Moses and “the song of the Lamb”. Just as Moses led the Israelites in the praise and wor­ship of God (Ex.15:1-21) after crossing the Red Sea, so Jesus leads the heavenly multi­tudes in worshipping God!

The following doxology in Revelation 16:5-7 is offered to God by an angel:

In the following doxology of Revelation 19:1-8, praise and worship is of­fered to God by a great multitude in heaven. There is no mention of Christ apart from the marriage of the Lamb. No worship is dir­ected to the Lamb, yet the marriage of the Lamb is presented as a cause for glorifying God who is seated on the central throne.

Finally, in Revelation 21:23, in the heavenly city, “the glory of God gives it light” (replacing the sun) and the Lamb is its “lamp” (replac­ing the moon).

Our survey of the New Testament doxologies has shown that Yahweh God is the sole object of worship. Just as there are no doxologies to Jesus (apart from one or two uncertain verses), so there are no pray­ers to Jesus in the New Testament, as we shall see. This is a fundamen­tal fact and it shows that there is no basis for the trin­ita­rian deifi­cation of Jesus. The few debatable verses that trinitar­ians use in their sup­port can­not stand by them­selves when the whole New Testa­ment con­text is taken into account.

Trinitarians reject the plain fact that Jesus was nei­ther wor­shipped in the NT church nor the one to whom believers prayed in their daily lives. On the contrary, Jesus places himself among those who worship God: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for sal­vation is from the Jews” (Jn.4:22). As for prayer, Jesus prayed all night to the Father (Lk.6:12). Even after his resur­rection and glorifi­cation, Jesus contin­ues to intercede for us (Rom.8:34; Heb.7:25; 1Jn.2:1).

Jesus Christ, the one exalted to the zenith of creation, in­deed to a position second to that of God Himself, is a real human being like any of us. This is astonishing, even mind-bog­gling. We now see how much more wonder­ful is the biblical message about Jesus Christ than the trinitar­ian one. The same is true of every New Testament passage in which Jesus is eu­logized in magni­ficent terms, though never as God.

In fact some of the adulations of Jesus in the Bible are problematic to trinitar­ians because they make him less than divine. For exam­ple, Christ is honored as “the firstborn of all creation” (Col.1:15), an exalted title that no matter how we interpret it refers to the eldest son. No son is equal to his father in every respect, for a son, by definition, derives his exist­ence from his father in some way, other­wise he would not be called a son except by adopt­ion, an idea that would be reprehensible to trinitarians if applied to Jesus. But if Jesus is a true man as he is in Scripture, then the glorious attri­bution, “firstborn of all creation,” would be an extraordi­nary pro­clamation of the highest praise.

Because Jesus is man (“the man Christ Jesus,” 1Tim.2:5), the eulogies and adulations ascribed to him in the NT (e.g., his exaltation to God’s right hand) gain height­ened signifi­cance. Once we have been freed from trinitar­ian blind­ness, these magnificent praises and glor­ifica­tions stir us powerful­ly, for they reveal the heights of Yahweh’s love and grace shown to the man Christ Jesus, and through him to those who are in Christ. Whereas in trinit­arian­ism the praises are no more than Jesus’ due as God, in biblical mono­the­ism they are a wondrous display of Yahweh’s bound­­less grace shown to man. Hence all the praises poured forth on Jesus in the NT are “to the glory of God the Father” (Phil.2:11; cf. 1Pet.4:11). This is contrary to trinita­rian think­ing because it deflect­s the accomplish­ments from the Son to the Father.

In the New Testament, Jesus is never the object of worship in the way worship is offered to God. We read of people who paid homage to Jesus, usually by kneeling before him. In the ancient Near East, kneeling or bowing was a familiar gesture of respect and courtesy, but was not in itself under­stood as an act of divine worship. Abraham bowed before the Hit­tites (Gen. 23:12), and David bowed before Saul (1Sam.24:8) des­pite know­ing that God had rejected Saul as king. Some Christ­ians would never kneel to anyone or anything except before crucifixes or sacred stat­ues because of the mistaken notion that kneeling before someone is nec­essarily an act of divine worship. (The next chapter has a discussion on the meaning of proskyneō when the word is applied to Jesus.)

The Bible says absolutely nothing about the worship of the Spirit. The total silence will come as a surprise to those who believe that the Spirit is the third per­son of the Trinity and is to be worshipped as God. That the Bible never speaks of wor­shipping the Spirit is noted by ISBE, a trin­itarian refer­ence:

The only verse in the Bible that may give a hint of the wor­ship of the Spirit is John 4:24: “God is spirit, and those who worship him must wor­ship in spirit and truth”. But most trinita­rians (e.g., John Calvin) do not think that “spirit” in this verse refers to the Holy Spirit. Rather, it is a statement of God’s spirit nature; hence most Bibles have the lower­case “spirit” (NASB, ESV, NIV, NJB, HCSB, NET, RSV), though NKJV has “Spirit”.

Given the Bible’s total silence on worshipping the Holy Spirit, the Nicene Creed is obviously wrong when it says that the Spirit is one “who with the Father and the Son is wor­shipped together.” It also explains why trinit­arian­ism could not be ratified until the late 4th century, at the First Council of Constantinople of 381.

Most Christians don’t know that at the earlier and histor­ically more im­portant Council of Nicaea of 325 (whose importance was equalled only by Chalcedon of 451), only the Son but not the Spirit was deified to co­equal­ity with the Father. This reflects the church’s uncertainty about the deity or even the separate personality of the Holy Spirit. Because of this hesitation, the earlier binit­arian creed of 325 is actually a “better” creed (in an ironic sense) than the later trinitarian creed of 381 for hav­ing one less error.

The question posed in the very title of James D.G. Dunn’s book, Did the First Christians Worship Jesus? The New Testa­ment Evidence, is an­swered by Dunn himself in the book’s final chapter under the heading “The Answer”. Dunn’s ans­wer to his own quest­ion is a qualified and nuanced “no”. The following are the last two para­graphs of his answer to his own question:

[This section may be skipped on a first reading]

How do we understand the words “the Lamb in the midst of the throne” in Revelation 7:17? The phrase “in the midst” has the exact Greek form ana meson. A search for its root form ana mesos shows that it is used three times in the NT outside Rev.7:17, each in the same form ana meson (correspond­ing to the highlighted words in the following):

These verses do not shed obvious light on the meaning of “the Lamb in the midst of the throne”. Moreover, while there are many refer­ences in the book of Revel­a­tion to God sit­ting on His throne, there is no clear reference to the Lamb sitting in the middle or the center of that throne.

To be specific, God is described 11 times in Revelation as the One who “sits upon the throne” (Rev.4:9,10; 5:1,7,13; 6:16; 7:10,15; 19:4; 20:11; 21:5). In none of these is Christ said to share the Father’s throne. Only in Rev.3:21 is there any mention of Christ sitting on the Father’s throne (“as I also conquered and sat down with my Father on His throne”), but the same verse also says that Jesus has a throne of his own (“I will grant him to sit with me on my throne”), just as the 24 elders have their own thrones as we see five verses later (4:4, also 11:16). These 24 thrones are arranged “around” the throne of God, with Christ seated at God’s right hand. This would locate Christ’s throne at the right-hand side of God’s throne.

In the New Testament, the construction en mesos occurs more often (26 times) than ana meson, the two being “loose synonyms” (Exposi­tor’s Greek Testament, vol.5, p.400). More pertinent to our discuss­ion is the fact that en mesos occurs seven times in Revelation where in each instance the exact form is en mesōi. Here are the seven verses in Revelation (all quoted from ESV unless indi­cated otherwise):

Revelation 5:6 is listed twice because it has two occurrences of en mesos, both of which are explained by BDAG (mesos): For the first instance, BDAG suggests, “on the cen­ter of the throne and among the four living creatures”. BDAG places the second instance under definition 2b (“as subst. neuter ἀνὰ μέσον”), leading to “in the midst of, among,” that is, in the midst of the elders.

Hence the most accurate translation of the Greek of Rev.5:6 seems to be: “in the midst of the throne and of the four living creatures and in the midst of the elders” (which matches NKJV exact­ly). Why does John use “in the midst” twice in this verse? Could it be that the four living creatures, like the Lamb, are within the throne in some sense whereas the elders are not within but around the throne? This seems to find support in Revelation 6:6: “a voice in the midst of the four living creatures”. In view of the fore­going, this voice must be that of the Lamb.

But if the throne on which God sits is not viewed as a quasi-material structure but the symbol of His author­ity (just as “scepter” often carries this meaning, e.g. Gen.49:10; Ps.45:6; 110:2), then the Lamb at its center would indic­ate that Jesus has a central role in the govern­ing of God’s uni­verse. In this govern­ment, the Lamb is assisted in some way by the four living creat­ures. Because God has given the Lamb a central role in the rule over His universe, His throne is appro­priately called “the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev.22:1).

Whatever else “in the midst of the throne” may mean, one thing is cer­tain: To be “in the midst of the throne” is to be under the authority of “the One seated upon the throne”.

In his standard commentary on Revela­tion, R.H. Charles comments on the Jewish antecedents of “the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev.22:1). The commentary makes the sig­nificant observation that in the Jewish con­cept of the Messiah seated on the throne of God, worship is directed to God, not to the Messiah (see the last sentence in the following).

Romans 9:5 says, “To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ who is God over all, blessed forever. Amen.” (ESV). There is disagreement among Bibles on how the latter part of this verse before the “Amen” should be translated, as seen in the following:

The varying translations of the doxology in Romans 9:5b fall into two main camps: those which identify Christ as God (ESV, NIV, NJB) and those which do not (NAB, RSV, ITNT, CJB, REB); included in the former are those (KJV, NASB, NRSV) which im­ply that Christ is God but in lang­uage that, to the English ear, might allow for slight ambiguity. Some tran­slations (NIV, RSV, NRSV) acknowledge both meanings as being possible by giving alter­native readings in foot­notes.

The diversity of translation stems from one and only one problem: The inter­pret­ation of Romans 9:5 depends largely on what the translator thinks is the correct way of punctuat­ing the statement in the Greek text. It is not an issue of text­ual attestation (there is no problem with the manu­script evid­ence) but of punctuation (the original Greek text had no punct­uation). The ambig­uous syntax of Romans 9:5 indicates that this verse cannot, by itself, be used as a proof text for or against trinitarian­ism.

In fact many trinitarian Bibles have chosen to translate Romans 9:5 in the non-trinitarian way. One reason is that the words “who is over all” can hardly be applied to Christ since Paul elsewhere says that Christ will be sub­ject to God in the final eschato­logical state of affairs (1Cor.15:27-28).

NRSV’s rendering (“the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed forever”) is the one closest to the syntax of the NA28 Greek text, but we should keep in mind that the punctuation in the Greek was decided by the NA28 edit­orial committee and that the original Greek does not have the punctuation marks that we see in the following from NA28:

Nonetheless, NRSV’s use of “Messiah” rather than “Christ” in Romans 9:5 is help­ful for reminding us that “Christ” is not fundamentally or origin­ally a proper name but a title which means the Messiah (the Anointed One). The notion that the Messiah can be identified with God—or God with the Mess­iah—as one and the same person, is foreign to the Old and New Testaments. It was God Himself who anointed the Messiah (Acts 4:27; 10:38), appoint­ing him the deliverer of Israel, the one whom David add­resses as “my Lord” in Psalm 110:1.

H.A.W. Meyer [5] rules out equat­ing Christ with God in Romans 9:5 and points out that in 2 Corinthians 6:18, God is said to be the pantokratōr or mighty ruler (this word is defined by BDAG as “Almighty, All-Powerful, Omnipo­tent One”). First Meyer says:

Meyer then elaborates on Paul’s distinction between God and Christ and the implausibility of identifying Christ with God in Romans 9:5:

James D.G. Dunn also concludes that Christ is not to be iden­tified with “God over all” in Romans 9:5 because an “abrupt depart­ure from Israel’s monotheism” cannot be contem­plated:

Dunn’s statement and Meyer’s are both of a gener­alized nature that applies to Paul’s teaching as a whole and is not limited to Romans 9:5. The clear message is that Paul has never left “Israel’s mono­theism”.

To gain a better understanding of the doxology of Romans 9:5, we com­pare it with two other Pauline statements which have similar word­ing. In the following three verses (all from ESV), the Greek text enclosed in par­en­theses cor­res­ponds to the English words in italics:

The doxology in the second of these verses, Romans 1:25, is obviously ad­dressed to God. Nothing in the substance of this verse or Paul’s teach­ing as a whole suggests that Paul would suddenly address this doxology to Christ. Just now we saw that Dunn speaks of “the con­tinuity between Israel’s faith and Paul’s gospel” which makes unlikely any “abrupt depart­ure from Israel’s mono­theism”.

As for the doxology in the third verse, 2Cor.11:31, there is no doubt that it is add­ressed to God and not to Jesus, as seen in the nominative case of ho ōn which agrees with the nomin­ative case of “God” and not the geni­tive case of “the Lord Jesus”.

That the doxologies in these two verses, Rom.1:25 and 2Cor.11:31, are addressed to God rather than Christ gives weight to the view that the doxo­logy in Romans 9:5, which has similar wording in the Greek, is like­wise addressed to God rather than Christ.

The word eulogētos (“blessed, praised”) that is used in Romans 9:5 occurs eight times in the New Testament. Significantly, in all eight occurrences, the object of praise is, without exception, God the Father rather than Jesus Christ (the words in italics correspond to eulogētos):

I have examined every doxology in the New Testament and have confirmed that they are all directed to Yahweh alone as the object of worship. There are one or two debatable or limited ex­ceptions to this, but there is not a single doxology to Jesus that can be esta­blished with certainty. This indicates that he was not an object of divine worship in the NT church. For this and other reasons, I have said that what the Gentile churches have done and are still doing is con­trary to what we find in the New Testament, and as such is unquestionably idola­trous.

Our survey of the New Testament doxo­logies shows that not a single doxology can with certainty be ascribed to Christ. Romans 9:5 comes closest to this be­cause it could, by its ambiguous Greek syntax, refer to the Father or to Christ. But when other factors are taken into account, notably the fact that nowhere else in Paul’s writings is Christ ever spoken of as “God,” schol­ars of the stature of H.A.W. Meyer, James Denney, and James D.G. Dunn all reject ascribing the doxo­logy to Christ.

Despite all these difficulties for the trinitarian reading of Romans 9:5, some trinitarians are willing to make this verse an exception to Paul’s entire teach­ing and ascribe its doxo­logy to Christ despite being fully aware that the meaning of Romans 9:5 depends solely on how this verse is punctuated, as decided by the Bible translator or exegete.

For those of us who come from a trinita­rian back­ground, what is shocking is that although Jesus has been ex­alted to the highest imaginable place in the universe, seated next to Yahweh Himself, not one doxo­logy is unam­biguous­ly add­ressed to Jesus out of the many in the New Testament. There is also no prayer addressed to him, as we shall see. When Paul speaks of prayer he says, “I bow my knees before the Father” (Eph.3:14).

The point is clear: Jesus is never venerated as God. The line be­tween the finite and the infinite is never crossed. The high veneration ac­corded the Lamb in Revelation 5:9-14 does not change this fact but underlines it, since a careful reading of Revelation 5 shows that the Lamb is venerated right in the midst of the wor­ship of “Him who sits on the throne”. This is similar to the way Israel venerated Yahweh and David together (1Chr.29:20).

To transgress the line is to cross it and overstep the esta­blished limits, as did the angels who “did not stay within their own position of authority” (Jude 1:6). Yahweh exalted Jesus to the highest place in all of creat­ion next to and second only to Himself, but that is not good enough for trinita­rians, so we exalted Jesus to coequality with Yahweh in all things, and flung aside the first commandment!

Death is the penalty for breaking any of the ten com­mand­ments. We can only hope that, like Paul in his persecut­ion of the church, we will re­ceive mercy and forgiveness be­cause we disobeyed God in ignorance (1Tim.1:13). Whether the Fathers of the Gentile church of the mid-second century on­wards could claim clemency on the grounds of ignorance, we won’t know until the day of judgment. But those of us liv­ing in the present age would be wise to seize the opportunity for forgive­ness.

The fact that Yahweh is “the God of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph.1:17) already draws a sharp line between “God” and “Lord,” that is, between the Father and Jesus Christ. Yet Yahweh was pleased to exalt Christ. Two verses later, Paul says:

This passage contains a lot of con­tent that we need to “unpack,” and is more easily understood by looking at its flow:

Yahweh raised Jesus from the dead

and seated him at His right hand in the heavenly places

far above all rule and power and dominion

and above every name that is named

not only in this age but also in the one to come.

He put all things under his feet

and gave him to the church as head over all things.

 

It may come as a surprise, even a shock, to some trinitar­ians that in all his letters, only once does Paul thank Jesus Christ directly: “I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, ap­point­ing me to his service.” (1Tim.1:12) It doesn’t mean that Paul is ungrate­ful to Christ, or that we should be ungrateful to Christ, for indeed Paul declares that Christ has loved us to the utmost, even unto death as the sacrificial Lamb of God.

Yet the surprising fact remains that only once in his many letters does Paul thank Jesus directly. On the other hand, Paul gives thanks to God ma­ny times. A few times he gives thanks to God through Jesus Christ in express­ions such as “I thank my God through Jesus Christ” (Rom.1:8) or “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ” (Rom.7:25).

This tells us, firstly, that thanksgiving is ultimately directed to God, the Creator of all things. Indeed “every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17). And God out of His love has given us the greatest gift of all, Jesus Christ, His only Son (John 3:16).

Secondly, just as Jesus constantly gave thanks to the Father during his time on earth, so he wants us to direct our thanks­giving to God. Since Jesus does all things to glorify his Father and to set an exam­ple for us, it is fitting that we too should glorify God through thanks­giving (“that it may increase thanks­giving, to the glory of God,” 2Cor.4:15).

 

We now survey the Greek words for “thanksgiv­ing” or “give thanks” in the New Testament: charis, euchar­isteō, eucharistia, eucharistos. This will show us that in the New Testament, thanksgiving is directed to God the Father and not explicitly to Jesus Christ. It will also tell us where to direct our thanksgiving: to the Father whom Jesus wants to glorify.

The word charis (χάρις, grace, favor, gratitude) occurs fre­quently in the New Testament and has several re­lated mean­ings. It occurs six times in the specif­ic phrase “thanks be to,” all occurring in Romans and Corin­thians, and all used only of God, specifically in the expression charis tō theōi or tō theōi charis. These two phrases, which are identical apart from word order, both mean “thanks be to God”:

In all six verses, the thanksgiving is addressed directly to God. Other rele­vant statements involving charis are:

Again it is God who is thanked, the One to whom grati­tude is directed.

The verb eucharisteō (εὐχαριστέω, be thankful, give thanks) is used main­ly by Paul. It occurs 24 times (in 23 verses) in his letters, but only 14 times in the rest of the New Testa­ment. Of the 14 verses out­side Paul’s writ­ings, one has Jesus as the object of thanksgiving (a leper thanks Jesus for healing him, Lk.17:16); all the others have God the Father as the object of thanksgiv­ing, mainly in connection with the feeding of the thousands or the institu­tion of the Lord’s Supper.

All the 24 instances of eucharisteō in Paul’s letters have God as the object of thanksgiving except in Romans 16:4 where thanks is given to Prisca and Aquila. The following are the 24 instances of eucharisteō in Paul (the word occurs twice in Rom.14:6):

In this list, only in Romans 16:4 is eucharisteō used of peo­ple (Prisca and Aquila). All the other instances refer to God the Father and none to Jesus Christ. This is not to say that we cannot give thanks to any­one but God. In­deed Paul expresses gratitude to Prisca and Aquila for risking their necks for him. Paul also gives thanks on one occasion to Christ Jesus (1Tim.1:12) for judging him to be faithful to his service. What is surpris­ing is that this is the only instance of thanks addressed to Jesus in Paul’s letters, and it is in the third person. Thanks­giving is, with few exceptions, always directed to God, the Father of Jesus Christ and the object of our gratit­ude. In fact there will be judgment and con­demn­ation for those who do not glorify God by rendering Him thanks (Rom.1:21-24).

The same word eucharisteō occurs eleven times in the gospels: four times of Jesus’ giving thanks at the feeding of the thou­sands (Mt.15:36; Mk.8:6; Jn.6:11; 6:23), and four times of Jesus’ thanks­giving at the Last Supper (Mt.26:27; Mk.14:23; Lk.22:17,19). The remaining three instances are in Lk.17:16 (a Samaritan thanks Jesus for healing him), Lk.18:11 (a Pharisee thanks God that he is not like the tax collect­or), and John 11:41 (Jesus thanks his Father for hearing his prayer for the raising of Lazarus).

Outside the gospels and Paul’s letters, eucharisteō occurs three times: Acts 27:35 (Paul thanks God for the bread), Acts 28:15 (Paul thanks God for the encouragement of seeing the bro­thers in Rome), and Rev.11:17 (“we give you thanks, O Lord God Almighty”).

Praise and thanksgiving are among the basic ingredients of worship. And the over­whelming evidence regarding these two elements of worship is that they are consistently addressed only to the Father.

The word eucharistia (εὐχαριστία, thankfulness, gratitude, render­ing thanks) occurs 15 times in the New Testament: once in Acts, 12 times in Paul, twice in Revelat­ion. All these 15 instances, with the exception of Acts 24:3 (in which Tertullus thanks Felix), refer to thanksgiving to God. Seven of these refer to God explicitly:

Seven of the occurrences refer to God implicitly:

To summarize: Of the 15 occurrences of eucharistia, 7 refer to God expli­cit­ly, 7 refer to God im­plicitly, and one refers to Tertullus’s gratitude to Felix.

Finally, the word eucharistos (εὐχάριστος, thankful) occurs only once in the New Testament, in Colossians 3:15: “And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful.” Paul does not expli­citly say who the object of the thanksgiving is, but it is most likely an implicit reference to God because Paul consist­ently uses all the cognate words—charis (in the sense of thanksgiv­ing), eucharisteō, eucharis­tia—of God the Father and never of Jesus Christ, with one exception.

On the other hand, although God is the sole object of thanks­giving, it is through Christ that we give thanks to God (Rom.1:8; 7:25; Col.3:17), for it is through Christ that God’s promises are “yes” (2Cor.1:20), and through Christ that we offer a sacrifice of praise to God (Heb.13:15), and through Christ that God reconciles all things to Himself (Col.1:20).